The seeds of surrender
By Jonathan Rosenblum

(July 27) We are currently witnessing the reprise of an
ancient midrash, which relates an argument between
Ishmael and Isaac. Both claimed to be the true heirs of
the Divine promise of the Land to their father, Abraham.
And both understood that the issue revolved around who
was willing to sacrifice more for the Covenant. 

Ishmael boasted that he had submitted to circumcision
when he was 13 years old, not a mere eight days. Isaac
replied that he would be prepared to offer himself on an
altar. That, says the midrash, was the prelude to the
Binding of Isaac. 

For the moment, it is the Arabs who have accepted the
role of Isaac. 

At Camp David, Prime Minister Ehud Barak asked
Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat what he
really wanted in Jerusalem. Arafat replied by describing
his vision of traveling unimpeded to Jerusalem, the capital
of the Palestinian state. Barak told him to skip the vision
thing and get down to practicalities. 

Arafat, however, had the last word: "Anyone who does
not understand what Jerusalem means to me is an
impractical man." 

Thus did a Moslem leader lecture a Jewish prime minister
- descendant of unbroken generations who directed their
every prayer to Jerusalem - on the preciousness of Jerusalem. 

One could take a cynical view of the importance of
Jerusalem in ArafatÕs eyes. After all, as Daniel Pipes has
conclusively shown in these pages, Jerusalem occupies a
very minor status, at most, in Islam, and is not even
mentioned in the Koran. 

But there is something much deeper going on here. The
Arabs have contempt for those who have lost all
connection to their past, and to the historical sense of
their peoplehood. 

Salah Tamari, a former Palestinian terrorist told Israeli
journalist Aharon Barnea of the complete transformation
he underwent in an Israeli prison. While in prison, he had
completely despaired of any hope that the Palestinians
would one day realize any of their territorial dreams, and
so he was ready to renounce the struggle. 

Then, one Pessah, he witnessed his Jewish warder eating
a pita sandwich. 

Tamari was shocked, and asked his jailer how he could
so unashamedly eat bread on Pessah. 

The Jew replied: "I feel no obligation to events that took
place over 2,000 years ago. I have no connection to
that." 

That entire night Tamari could not sleep. He thought to
himself: "A nation whose members have no connection to
their past, and are capable of so openly transgressing
their most important laws - that nation has cut off all its
roots to the Land." 

He concluded that the Palestinians could, in fact, achieve
all their goals. From that moment, he determined "to fight
for everything - not a percentage, not such crumbs as the
Israelis might throw us - but for everything. Because
opposing us is a nation that has no connection to its roots,
which are no longer of interest to it." 

Tamari goes on to relate how he shared this insight with
"tens of thousands of his colleagues, and all were
convinced." 

THE severance of connection to a Jewish past is one of
the chief goals of the branja (clique), which, as alarmingly
described by Yoram Hazony in his book, The Jewish
State: The Struggle for IsraelÕs Soul, dominates Israeli
intellectual life, and whose influence is felt in every sphere
- education, the military, and the judiciary. 

In the eyes of our intellectual elites, Judaism itself has
become an enemy, because Jewish history and the
age-old Jewish sense of ourselves as one people gave
legitimacy to the idea of a Jewish state. And that state, a
colonial enterprise, conceived in sin, founded upon
outdated concepts of national character and mission, is a
militaristic oppressor of indigenous peoples. 

For members of the branja, giving back Judea and
Samaria is not a painful step necessitated by the desire for
peace, but a welcome thing in its own right, for it destroys
our link to some distant tribal past. Whether consciously
or unconsciously, they recognize the connection between
the Land of the ancient kingdom of Judea, and Judaism
and our identity as Jews. 

Everything that binds us to our past must be destroyed.
Thus Shulamit Aloni, as education minister, vehemently
opposed trips to Auschwitz for Israeli high-school
students, lest they foster feelings of national identity. One
of the chief architects of the Oslo process told US
Senator Daniel Moynihan six years ago that Israel would
have to prepare its people over the coming years for
painful concessions - the  abandonment of settlements, 
Palestinian statehood and control over areas of Jerusalem. 

That, our leaders have done brilliantly. 

Over the past six years, there has been a massive shift in
public opinion: the Likud position of today is the Peace
Now position of six years ago. Had Ehud Barak spoken
openly a year ago of making the kind of concessions he
was apparently prepared to make at Camp David, there
is no question he would have been defeated overwhelmingly. 

But, said the Oslo architect, the other side also needs to
prepare its people. They must know that there will be no
recognition of a right of return, no Palestinian sovereignty
over the Old City, and they must recognize IsraelÕs right
to exist. 

The danger, he said, is that only one side will undertake
its responsibilities while the other will continue to educate
its people that all its maximal demands are within reach,
while preparing them for war. 

And if that happens, the side that failed to educate its
people in the necessity of compromise will view its
adversary as having surrendered, and will thus be
emboldened by the prospect of eventual victory. 

That is precisely what has happened. Barak went to
Camp David with compromise offers that would have
been unthinkable mere months ago. But Arafat held fast.
And then came the American bridging proposals, which 
started from the point of BarakÕsoffers and required 
Barak to offer yet more. 

Yet Arafat stood firm. He has reached the same
conclusion as Tamari: the Jews are surrendering.